On the margins of nature

THE untidy and littered state of our road margins and railway lines is often criticised, but there are ways of dealing with the problem through the use of nature.

The excellent BBC Countryfile TV programme recently featured a project in Devon under which wild flowers and plants are being grown on roadside. The local council is currently managing 1,000 acres of wild verges. They offer a natural home for flora. Also, cars can help seeds to blow along and eventually take root. Orchids, primroses and other flowers are growing successfully. The Devon council is looking after a 13,000km network of roads and is cutting only the first metre of verge to allow growth take place.

Here, similar to what has happened in Britain, many of the flowers and plants that were common, especially on wet land, have vanished. It started in Britain during World War Two when there was widespread tillage to provide food for the population and studies show that only 2% of pre-war wild meadows now remain there.

But, the Devon Grow Wild campaign, which also includes communities in urban areas and schools, is taking off and could result in the return of beautiful flowers.

Ireland is estimated to have upwards of 850 wild flowers and plants. And while the pretty ones — like the bluebells — obviously appeal, the less eye-catching and even prickly ones also play an important role.

Nettles, for instance, are regarded as weeds, or pests, but they are host to the caterpillars of some of our most colourful butterflies, while thistles provide food for goldfinches and other birds. Is there any reason why patches of waste ground could not be set aside in cities and towns for what might be termed “wild gardens’’ to help nature? And why not leave a wild section in some discreet corner of a carefully-manicured domestic garden? Flowers continue to inspire artists and poets and how often have we seen the cycle of human life compared in verse to that of a simple flower — beautiful when young, but slowly fading with age and eventually dying.

In his scholarly book, Irish Wild Plants, Niall Mac Coitir writes: “At a fundamental level we all recognise that our lives depend upon greenery and plants, not just in the mundane sense of providing for our practical needs, but also in the deeper sense of affirming our connection to nature and other living things. This is the real source of our engagement with plants: the fact that even if we could somehow survive without them, our very souls and our humanity would still be immeasurably diminished.’’